Modeling plant hotspots in New Guinea and village-scale land change dynamics in Papua New Guinea

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Abstract

The island of New Guinea harbors the third largest tropical forest in the world, after Amazonia and the Congo. Forest cover changes in New Guinea are occurring at a fast rate and it is vital to improve our understanding of the drivers of forest change and identify how these changes impact human livelihoods and biotic diversity. New Guinea is politically split into two countries; the western half is Indonesia and the eastern half is Papua New Guinea. The first part of this dissertation focuses on Papua New Guinea, where logging and subsistence agriculture account for 92% of forest cover changes. ...